US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Randall Schriver recently told a closed-door meeting that immediate and strong actions were taken by Washington right after Beijing proposed passing an "anti-secession law."
The meeting was held in the middle of this month by the US-Taiwan Business Council for its members to exchange opinions with Schriver, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless and Major General John Allen.
According to Schriver, when then deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage met with China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Dai Bingguo (
In response to the call, Beijing sent Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Vice Chairman and Taiwan Affairs Office Deputy Director Sun Yafu (
Beijing also agreed to charter passenger flights during the Lunar New Year holidays to show its goodwill.
According to Schriver, the US is actively involved in the cross-strait situation. It is handling not only minor conflicts but also strategic issues of significance between the two sides -- such as the controversial anti-secession law.
Washington believes that Beijing's push for the law is actually a misjudgment, as the legislation was originally designed to restrain Taiwan's pro-independence forces once the green camp won a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan in last December's elections.
Although the results of the elections did not go as it had expected, it was too late for Beijing to put the brakes on the proposed law.
Schriver said that Taiwan-US relations had been poor in recent years. One main reason for this was that, after its democratization, Taiwan has been eager to make a breakthrough in both Taipei-Washington and cross-strait relations. However, its pursuit of a new national status has been seen as a provocation in Beijing's eyes.
He said that China is gaining an upper hand due to Taiwan's shrinking military budget.
Schriver emphasized that although the US has upheld the Taiwan Relations Act to protect Taiwan, it will be in a very difficult position if a conflict is initiated unilaterally by Taiwan.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS